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Comment by hackingonempty | Hacker News Reader

Trump is going to pardon every single person in his administration and his entire family on his way out of office. They will all ride off into the sunset with the millions they made. There will be no punishment.

Nobody is going to rise up against it, because "both sides." Biden pardoned his son.

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*billions, the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars

I understand Presidential pardons are abused but I wouldn't say at least this is not "both sides", this is worse.

For years there were corporate overlords lobbying and corruption. That was "both sides".

Now this "side" has been railing against corruption by the "other side" and how they are going to put every corrupt person in jail and most "transparent" government.

Turns out they are much worse. Don't even know how to be corrupt properly. Just blatantly corrupt. When corned keep doing whataboutism - forgetting that even if the "other side" was corrupt it doesn't mean they can be corrupt too. Worse yet they still get support from their base.

Make no mistake - this is making US a low trust society on par with a third world country.

That was the OP's intent -- it's meant to be sarcastic. That's why "both sides" was in quotes. It's a common form of argument: I can do (very bad thing) because you did (slightly bad thing).

It even has a Wiktionary entry:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bothsidesism

> Biden pardoned his son.

Yes, that's bad.

It's not even remotely the same.

Biden pardoned his son to protect him from being hounded for the rest of his life by rabid Republicans that still can't shut up about Hillary's emails (despite Trump doing 10x worse with the top secret files in his toilet), Benghazi (with 4 deaths, far less than the current Iran boondogle), etc...

Trump has weaponised the pardon power, which was previously used by other presidents to pardon people who didn't deserve their punishment. Non-violent drug crimes like possession of a bit of weed, life imprisonment over a technicality, that kind of thing.

Trump instead enables rampant corruption coupled with blind obedience with the promise of a pardon as the get-out-of-jail-free card.

He's also made pardons pay-for-play, letting out crypto scammers, drug lords, and anyone else willing to pay him a few million each.

It's obscene. It's corrosive. It's destroying your democracy, so very very visibly that the rest of the world is staring with slack-jawed horror.

Seriously.

Over here on the other side of the little pond we call the Pacific, we're worried about you yanks.

Pacific, or Atlantic… I can’t tell if you’re a Brit or an Australian.

Does it matter?

Our British mates are equally appalled.

The president has full discretionary pardon powers with no check or balance. It was inevitable that the power would be abused. You have an old system bursting at the seams of the maximalist modern world. Trump took advantage of your inadequacies.

Nothing felt inevitable about having such an arch traitor to the US in power. With all of congress turning their backs on America & our constitution, and a Supreme Court rabidly helping him.

There were lots of checks built in. But all three branches of government are bolstering this worship of vice, death, chaos, disease, and suffering

> Nothing felt inevitable about having such an arch traitor to the US in power.

I vehemently disagree. The US has been headed towards authoritarianism for close to a century.

You could maybe impeach them both fast enough to prevent it. We are no where close to the first step of that though (electing a Speaker of the House that has not partnered in the corruption).

Impeaching without conviction won't do jack. We need 67 senators to convict. I honestly don't know what it would take for that many rep senators to vote to convict.

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. ... And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

I sort of thought success was implied in my comment about using impeachment to eliminate the current 3 highest people in the order of succession.

We are not near the first step and will never be near the second step. Conviction requires a 2/3 majority.

The only way that could ever happen is for the Republicans themselves to decide that they're done with the administration. Whatever could possibly cause that, the composition of the House wouldn't matter.

It matters a little bit. Easier to not let Mike Johnson ever be president.

The pardons should be ignored.

Not sure if they'll be ignored, but there's an effort to rein them in

https://olszewski.house.gov/media/press-releases/olszewski-i...

Correct. Trump set the precedent by claiming that pardons made with "autopen" are invalid, based on nothing. Accordingly, pardons made by a senile president who just blindly signs whatever's placed in front of him¹ are also invalid.

¹ Trump on Binance cryptocurrency tycoon he pardoned: "I don't know who he is" -- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-binance-cryptocurrency-ty...

Billions not millions

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